In sympathy with strikers

Some phrases provoke emotion that is out of all proportion to their meaning. One of them is "secondary picketing", an activity generally regarded as so obviously reprehensible that trade unionists who argue for its legalisation are regarded as clinically insane.

The establishment has always dismissed, as not worth discussing, conduct that threatens its position but can be justified on merit. Mindless disapproval is more convenient than thought. Secondary picketing - indeed secondary action in general - is, on any rational analysis, often justified and frequently laudable.

Secondary picketing got a bad name back in 1972 when striking miners surrounded the coke depot at Saltley in Birmingham as part of their campaign against the National Coal Board. Their success made Arthur Scargill a national figure - an obvious catastrophe, but not in itself sufficient reason to condemn the tactic that became associated with his name. The real complaint against secondary action is easily explained. It is hated because it works.

Thanks to Saltley, secondary action is connected in folklore with the threat of violence. Most days the striking miners did nothing more intimidating than shout in Yorkshire accents. Violence has no place in proper picketing. It is an exercise in persuasion. In the modern economy, trade unions can only do their job if the right to persuade is spread wide. And sometimes the right to argue has to be extended to the right to act.

We live in the age of the subcontractor. Small firms - often with dubious financial standing and questionable ethics - are employed by the great companies to perform their least profitable jobs at cut prices. They dirty their hands while the Plcs, with famous names and respectable chief executives, remain clean. Their employees' interests can only be protected if trade unions are allowed to take action against the semi-detached corporations which effectively determine wages and conditions in the subsidiaries that serve them.

The case in point is Gate Gourmet - an industrial scandal yet to be resolved. The company's management is right to say that British Airways has constantly borne down on them to reduce prices. That does not justify their conduct. But it does make clear that the hardship of their low-paid workers is unlikely to be relieved unless pressure is brought to bear on the company that demands ever-reduced labour costs.

That pressure may need to be more than picketing. It ought to be legal to withdraw labour from companies "closely associated with" (a euphemism for dominated by) firms in dispute with their employees. Remember Rupert Murdoch's destruction of the print unions. His transport fleet was the most vulnerable part of his operation. It was made a separate company, so strike action by the drivers and attempts to persuade them to strike were illegal. While secondary action is unlawful, big companies enjoy immunity from the consequences of action they initiated.

More than 200 years ago Adam Smith, examining strike action, concluded: "The master can hold out much longer than the men ... In the long run, the workmen may be as necessary to the master as the master is to him. But the necessity is not so imminent." Trade unions were created to redress the balance. They cannot do that if they are prohibited from confronting the big companies that manipulate the small.

That may require union members in "associated companies" to lose pay and risk jobs. The "sympathy strike" requires one worker to make sacrifices for another. That is why secondary action is often laudable. Heathrow baggage handlers are rarely congratulated on their altruism, but during the Gate Gourmet dispute they supported lower-paid workers at considerable personal cost. Solidarity is no longer fashionable - indeed, in industry and commerce it is illegal. But in a decent society it ought to be encouraged rather than condemned.

It all comes down to the most important political question: whose side are you on? Adam Smith was right again: "We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of wages but many against combining to heighten it." The odds have always been stacked against low-paid workers. Gate Gourmet employees, and people like them, have no chance of a fair deal unless they receive help from friends. Secondary action is more than necessary. It is right.